Committee Members Allege Non-cooperation in FCI Visits, Move HC

The state government, FCI general manager and its TS divisional manager, quality control officer of FCI-Mancherial as well as district civil supplies officers and rice millers associations of Karimnagar and Peddapalli districts have been made respondents in the writ petition (WP 30943/2023) filed in the TS High Court.

The CC members said the committee chairman, BRS Rajya Sabha member K. Keshava Rao, had remained a silent spectator. Minutes of the meetings between Dr Keshava Rao, the Civil Supplies Corporation (CSC) commissioner and the TS FCI officers, which have to be held every three months, have not been given to them.

“Norms say they have to be given to us by the next day,” said Mohammad Rizwan, a committee member.

Explaining how the millers game the system, Satyamurthy Sivalenka, committee member, said: “The millers are given paddy free by the Civil Supplies Corporation (CSC) on behalf of the FCI to mill and supply rice. The miller benefits from selling the husk. A mill having 100 tonnes capacity is given 1,000 tonnes of paddy. The millers sell the rice in the open market, where the rates are above Rs 50 per kg.”

There is no public audit of the procurement and distribution of paddy and rice. Civil supplies and irrigation minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy had stated that the last audit was for 2018-19. He said the BRS government had entrusted paddy stocks worth Rs 22,000 crore to rice millers without security or bank guarantee.

As per norms the millers have to supply 67 kg of rice per 100 kg of paddy. The rice and broken rice is given to the CSC. The farmer gets Rs 28 per kg, the Centre paying Rs 27 and the state government Rs 1.

“We met Union minister Piyush Goyal and the minister of state Niranjan Jyothi and appraised them on the issue. If the CSC had taken rice from the millers in time, the issue would not have risen," Satyamurthy said. With regard to the threat to impose 25 per cent cost of the rice on the millers for failure to deliver, he said it was a blessing in disguise as the millers end up paying only a part of their gains from the misappropriation of rice.

Justice D.S.R. Varma, former judge of the erstwhile AP and Allahabad High Courts, who is on the committee, said that the alleged lack of sufficient godown space with the CSC and FCI was a ruse of millers and the corrupt officials to retain the rice.

Justice Varma said the government should build its own storage spaces. “The lack of space also causes loss to marginal farmers when it rains as the grains are exposed to the weather,” he said.

The CSC can store 4.97 LMT (lakh metric tonnes) and has hired space for 3.26 LMT. The storage spaces at the mandal level stocking points are meager.

The committee in its affidavit stated that around `60,000 crore had been borrowed for paying farmers for procuring paddy. This, they said, was increasing the burden on the state government as the FCI and CSC had come to accept the practice of millers sending a small portion of CMR rice when they are asked to account for the paddy sent to them for milling. These figures were not made public, the petitioners stated.

Asked what he made of the diktat by the CSC to the millers on January 18 to supply CMR stocks by the end of the month, Justice Varma said, “This is a normal practice. The millers give lame excuses and have never complied with such orders. They won’t have the rice stocks as they sell it in the open market.”

The members asked the High Court to direct the authorities to facilitate inspections to be conducted by the CC members as ordered by the Centre in 2011.